factual
Cajal inferred brain circuits from sparse Golgi stain
Modern neuroscience began with Ramón y Cajal, who used Golgi's stain that randomly labeled only about 1% of nerve cells; the random sparseness allowed him to see the complete connectivity of individual cells and infer that the brain is made of directional circuits with input on dendrites and output via axons.
factualpending
Speaker
Jeff LichtmanEvidence Quote
“that stained randomly a very small subset of nerve cells. And that would seem to be a bad feature of a stain that only stains 1% of the cells. But it was random which 1%.”
Created: 6/13/2026, 12:30:16 AM
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